Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
AT&T’s latest subscriber figures make it seem like HBO and its sister service HBO Max are doing pretty well — great, even! In a regulatory filing this week, AT&T revealed that it beat its projected year-end goal with 73.8 million total subscribers between HBO and HBO Max (even after its breakup with Amazon). Not too bad, right?
But that win comes after a year of highly anticipated movie debuts meant to balloon subscriber numbers, and it’s still tens of millions of subscribers behind rivals like Disney Plus and Netflix. The numbers also come with some pretty big caveats. In other words, hold the applause.
For one, AT&T’s figures (earlier reported by Variety) conflate two separate services — HBO, its cable business, and HBO Max, its…
